Dad’s Hat Rye Whiskey Barrel Fill #1

I used a 15 gallon Dad’s Hat Rye Whiskey barrel I purchased at Keystone Homebrew Supply on a trip to Philly last year to drop off my NHC entries (advanced but didn’t place). Because I can only brew 5 gallons at a time, I had to brew 3 times to fill the barrel. Conventional wisdom seems to be for the first time use of a whiskey barrel, you should brew something big and dark, like an imperial stout otherwise the whiskey flavors will be too big for the beer. I don’t like to do what I’m supposed to, even if that doesn’t always work out, so I decided to fill the barrel with a pale ale type beer (kind of an Old Ale) colored a little with caramel wheat malt (46 SRM). People drink straight whiskey right, so why not put a lighter beer in for the first use?!

I decided to get a little bit of Brettanomyces in the barrel from the very beginning to help with protecting the beer from oxygen as it sat since it’s a smaller barrel. I chose to ferment one batch 100% with WLP645 Brettanomyces Claussenii and the other two fermented clean with WLP002 (details below).